News broke this morning that U.S. Special Forces over the weekend captured the key terrorist figure in the September 11, 2012 attack at the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya.
Abu Khattalah will be brought to the United States to face charges “in the coming days,” said Edward Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council.Abu Khattalah, who faces three federal criminal charges, will be tried in U.S. courts, said Attorney General Eric Holder.U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. citizens died in the September 11, 2012, attack, which became a political flashpoint.”We retain the option of adding additional charges in the coming days,” Holder said. “Even as we begin the process of putting Khatallah on trial and seeking his conviction before a jury, our investigation will remain ongoing as we work to identify and arrest any co-conspirators.”
U.S. officials say that Abu Khattalah is being held in a location outside Libya — perhaps on a naval vessel.
Khatallah had been a key suspect from the start of the post-Benghazi investigation. It also appeared he was never worried about being captured by the U.S. government. Just weeks after the assault on the compound, Khatallah was seen sipping a strawberry frappe on the patio of a Benghazi hotel, according to The New York Times.
Asked who should take responsibility for apprehending the mission’s attackers, [Khattallah] smirked at the idea that the weak Libyan government could possibly do it. And he accused the leaders of the United States of “playing with the emotions of the American people” and “using the consulate attack just to gather votes for their elections.”Mr. Abu Khattala’s defiance — no authority has even questioned him about the attack, he said, and he has no plans to go into hiding — offered insight into the shadowy landscape of the self-formed militias that have come to constitute the only source of social order in Libya since the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) took issue with the detention details and said the terrorist belonged in the Guantanamo Bay facility. Graham has been a fierce critic of the Obama Administration’s response to the Benghazi attack.
The capture of Khattala comes as the Obama Administration is under fire on several fronts for its domestic and foreign policy.
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